Not every top steam game is an epic open world title that would sell for $60 on PS4 and Xbox One. Into the Breach is an elegant sci-fi strategy blast you can play on your lunch break at work.
Settlers 7: Paths to a Kingdom (2010) Settlers 7 is all about micro-management! Everything needs to go in perfect balance if you want your empire to grow. If you’re spending too much on military, doing too little research or collecting too little resources then you have no chance of making it through the game.
If you are looking for a war-focused RTS, proceed to the next item in the list, because Settlers 7 will only disappoint you. The game places much more focus on the town planning and settlement rather than fights. The very small scale fights that do emerge can take care of themselves even without much user input. Unless you’re an old veteran of the game, Settlers 7 is bound to give you a tough time learning it. The campaign itself only acts as nothing more than a tutorial, for at the end you are still learning new tips and tricks. Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II (2009) Dawn of War II can be generalized as something like this: take an RTS, take away base building and resource collection, add special abilities to units and role playing mechanics and voila!
You have Dawn of War II. This game isn’t your typical RTS you’d expect but the second title in the franchise by the makers of Company of Heroes does manage to deliver what it promised to its fans. Now instead of spending half of your time worrying about resource collection or expanding your base, you are in constant battle, upgrading your units. Although you’re units never really die in the game, they shut down until their power is revived (now don’t take this too lightly, it is a lot harder than you think!) The storyline of the campaign is nothing remarkable and the missions have a tendency to get repetitive after a while. But what is really impressive about the game is the departure from the where you have countless soldiers and the war is what matters.
Dawn of War II tells its story in a different way for the first time, where each of your soldiers play a part in the story. For people loyal to traditional RTS, this might not be your thing but Dawn of War II does bring a lot of new stuff to the table.
UFO: Enemy Unknown (1994) The earth is under attack by aliens! It’s at times like these that the leaders of the world unite for a common cause, and create XCOM, an organization dedicated to detecting alien activity around the earth and putting a stop to it.
The players are given an option as where to build the headquarters of XCOM. From there on it’s the players job to keep the earth free of aliens. If any UFO is detected, the player sends in a team of soldiers to investigate and if any threat is faced they must fight off the aliens.
The game switches between two different views (Geoscape and the Battlescape) depending upon the contact with the enemy. Although the game isn’t a pure RTS game but as XCOM is funded by the top leaders of the world and if they do not like the progress, they will leave the project, so to keep the funding going the player needs to keep everyone happy by thinking strategically – obviously a tough job. Sins of a Solar Empire (2008) When war on earth is just not enough for you, Sins of a Solar Empire is here to get you into space, however it’s rather a slow game that requires a lot of time to finish a battle. Even on a small map, there are about 15 planets and on a large one it goes up to nearly a 100, so before you start a game, make sure you have some time at your disposal. Fleets bombard these planets and destroy enemy civilizations and then drop pods to start expanding their own population. You can only travel to various planets via marked routes. The game lacks a campaign, but then again something as huge as this doesn’t even need one.
What it does need is a little more introduction to the mechanics of the game. The tutorials are never really enough to get the player acquainted to the various aspects of the game.
To sum it up, Sins of a Solar Empire is a great game, but it’s recommended for people who can work in the morning after staying up all night playing a match of Sins of Solar Empire. Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth II (2006) The strongest point of the game is the way it represents the world of ‘ The Lord of The Rings‘ to the real time strategy community. For those who do not really care about the Tolkien brand, The Battle of Middle-Earth II is a major improvement over its predecessor.
In essence the game is pretty much the same as the original, it just improves upon its weak aspects, for example the look-alike maps and the bolted down buildings. The game does keep many of the praised aspects from the original. The customizations, heroes, resource gathering, base building provide enough charisma in the gameplay to keep any RTS fan involved. There are a number of factions to choose from and the gameplay is really addictive. Sacrifice (2000) Creativity involves risk and not many developers are willing to take that.
This is exactly what makes Sacrifice stand out among the crowd of RTS games. It’s different and offers unique elements to gamers. To begin with, Sacrifice was released in 2000 and offered some gorgeous graphics which were incomparable for its times (probably one major hook in the game). It also was the only RTS game that puts you on a level surface with your unit and not hovering above it. The story is about a wizard, who once summoned a demon to help him win a war, but the demon went out of control and caused an apocalypse. Now the wizard has vowed to banish him from the earth.
The gameplay is pretty basic, you build a base, build a team attack enemy. But in order to win the game, you must sacrifice a soul at the enemy wizards Altair. Sounds interesting right? Apart from a few drawbacks in the fighting sequence, the game has everything you need to keep you hooked at nights! Age of Mythology (2002) If somebody has ever read or seen any work about Greek or Egyptian myths, you would know how fun and interesting they can be. Now imagine all that in a strategy game with you having the power to command your mortal troops and invoke Godly powers upon your opponents. Totally awesome right?
Say hello to Age of Mythology, a spin-off of the popular Age of Empires series. The story is a mix of three ancient mythologies. The game follows the story of Arkantos, the commander of Atalantis who is ordered to assist the Trojan War. Arkantos discovers more deadly plans to release titans from the lowest level of Hades that can cause massive scale destruction. In order to save the world, Arkantos makes his way through Greece and Egypt using local men and even gods for his purpose. The gameplay is a somewhat similar to its sister Age of Empires series, but with some interesting additions. Age of Mythology is in 3D view.
You build your town, you expand it and prepare your military. As expected each unit has its own strengths and weaknesses, so the player must have a perfect blend of units to maximize the strengths. The mythological units are the most interesting ones and are created depending on which god you worship.
Civilization II (1996) Since we are talking about the best strategy games, why not mention the god-father of all micro management games (despite of the fact that its not a RTS game)? Civilization II was the sequel to a well-received Sid Meyer’s Civilization.
For its time, the game was highly complex. You build an empire and you win by conquering enemy civilizations or advancing to space. The task does seem simple, but with Civilization that’s not the case. The game is extremely detail oriented.
In order to build cities you need resources, trade and food. How to get the resources?
You need to build trade routes and mines. So you can get the picture that the game requires micro-managing skills by the player to keep his civilization in balance. Combat was highly improved over the first part, where the fights were won outright. In this game the winning unit can also sustain damage, which can be repaired later on.
Civilization II is considered by many as one of the greatest strategy games of all times due to an unmatched level of detail. Although the game has a steep learning curve, many RTS gamers will find it engaging. Homeworld (1999) A highly creative approach towards an RTS game, Homeworld is a never-before experience for the fans of the genre. While most of the gamers are used to playing on ground, where it’s a lot easier to fight with walls to give you cover and a higher ground to give you an edge, for homeworld you will have to come up with more creative ways. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to space warfare! You are the commander of a mother ship made by people of planet Kharak, who learn that the planet is not their true home and decide to look for it. Now you must use the ships abilities and your own wit to take people back to their true home, their “Homeworld”.
As an RTS game, interface is one crucial part of the gameplay, and Homeworld doesn’t lag behind on that. It does take the player some time to get used to the new mechanics (the case with most strategy games), it’s not a difficult job if tutorials are followed correctly. Some issues are faced with the AI, when units stop moving for no obvious reason, and laggy behavior of the repair ships. Also it wouldn’t have hurt the developers to put a health bar along with the units to keep a track of the battle. Homeworld may have its shortcomings, but it still have enough to offer an addictive RTS experience! Stronghold Crusader (2002) As the name suggests, the game is centered on the Crusades in the Middle-East. This might be the only notable RTS that finally moved out of Europe.
In the Crusade era, the wars were heavily focused on fortification, and that’s what the game does. The player is given a city inside a fortified wall which it needs to sustain. Being a desert, Oasis are the center of everything around here, and important strategic points. Watch what you’re people are eating, the happier they are the more taxes they will pay. This game pays much emphasis on city building which demands some real management skills! Rise of Nations (2003) So you’re a hardcore strategy gamer and Age of Empires just wasn’t enough for you?
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Allow us to introduce you to Rise of Nations, another masterpiece from the makers of Age of Empires. Micro-Management would be a small word to describe how this game goes, and it is one hell of a lengthy game. Players begin to build their empires from the dark ages, managing resources and go all the way into the modern era, a total of 8 periods of history to play through.
The gameplay is pretty simple. The player needs to balance his economy with his military. Too much focus on economy will leave you open for attack, and too much military will get you bankrupt. As the game advances you capture more and more cities (you can rename your cities at will) and gather resources to get more creatable units, each having its own specialty.
Being difficult is exactly what makes it a great strategy game.
Faster Than Light's pretty good. It's a kinda quick game that's fairly replayable. Get it from their www.ftlgame.com though, as it gets you the DRM-free version and a Steam key. Just be warned that battling in real time without pausing is basically hard mode. As for CS:GO, I noticed that my copy needed to redownload several files after validation, though mine was updated rather than freshly downloaded. It's a fun game, but yes, it does seem to be crashy on Mac lately, especially the custom content like Operation Payback. It's kinda tempting to see if it's any more stable in Wineskin/Crossover.